Returned Archives

Aleutian Cackling Goose: In 1975, fewer than 800 Aleutian cackling geese remained; fox removal and habitat protection helped the population rebound to around 200,000, and regulated hunting later returned

Fewer than 800 Aleutian cackling geese remained in 1975, with the birds restricted to a single rocky island in Alaska after introduced Arctic foxes destroyed nesting colonies across the Aleutian Islands. Fifty years later, predator removal, the creation of protected wetlands in California and coordinated management along the Pacific Flyway have helped the population recover […]

In the early 1990s, fewer than 1,000 threatened chum salmon returned to this Washington watershed; recent returns average 32,600 a year as a $9.7 million river restoration nears completion

chum salmon Representative image In the early 1990s, fewer than 1,000 threatened summer-run chum salmon made it back to the Big Quilcene River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula each year. Decades of logging, road building and habitat degradation had left the river choked with sediment, its gravel spawning beds buried and its side channels disconnected. Today, […]

In 1993, Chile adopted an Indigenous Law that enabled land restitution; by 2023 more than 510,000 acres had been returned to Mapuche communities, but native forest cover had barely changed

In 1993, Chile adopted an Indigenous Law that enabled land restitution In 1993, Chile passed a major Indigenous Law that created a formal process for returning ancestral land to Indigenous communities. Over the following 30 years, more than 510,000 acres were returned to the Mapuche, Chile’s largest Indigenous group. However, a long-term study found that […]